The Only Woman in the Room

 Title: The Only Woman in the Room

Author: Marie Benedict

Genre: Historical Fiction

Blurb:

Hedy Kiesler is lucky. Her beauty leads to a starring role in a controversial film and marriage to a powerful Austrian arms dealer, allowing her to evade Nazi persecution despite her Jewish heritage. But Hedy is also intelligent. At lavish Vienna dinner parties, she overhears the Third Reich's plans. One night in 1937, desperate to escape her controlling husband and the rise of the Nazis, she disguises herself and flees her husband's castle.

She lands in Hollywood, where she becomes Hedy Lamarr, screen star. But Hedy is keeping a secret even more shocking than her Jewish heritage: she is a scientist. She has an idea that might help the country and that might ease her guilt for escaping alone—if anyone will listen to her.

My Review:

It never ceases to amaze me what is written out of the history we know.  It truly is the people in power that control what is remembered.  Hedy Lamarr, is a well known name.  The only thing that I could have told you about her, if asked, before reading this book, was that she was a very successful and famous actress.  I could not have mentioned that she was from Austria, or eventually a mother, or married to one of the most powerful, dangerous, and influential men involved in the rise of the Third Reich in World War 2. One of my favorite lines of this book was, "I married more than a pretty face.  I married a secret weapon." This was after sharing some important information that she overheard with her husband at one of their lavish parties. They found that people were more inclined to continue a conversation in front of her because she was a woman. Her husband began to take advantage of that and would actually leave her alone with important political figures, just to see what they might say while he was absent. I also could not have told you that she was a brilliant, self-taught, scientist and inventor that worked to develop technology that could have easily turned the tables in the war.  That technology was refused by the navy because she was a woman! She considered this work more important than anything else she had done.  I really would have liked to see what happened if they used her technology.  How quickly might the war have ended? Would she be known today for more than a pretty face, as she so desired and deserves? Unfortunately, we can only guess, as with so many other cases where individuals were written out of history.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5